This one square represents everything the Pacific Islands have emitted.

17.3 Mt CO2/year. All 22 island nations. 19.3 million people.

One bright square among thousands.

Each dark square = one share of global emissions. China = 704. US = 284. Pacific = 1.

0.045% of global emissions. That was their entire contribution to this.

It is 2050. This is the archive of what they measured,
and what they feared was coming.

A walk-through · Year 2050

The Museum of the Blue Pacific

22 island nations. One rising ocean. This exhibition holds what they measured, what they lost, and what they tried. See what they saw coming, and could not stop.
↓ scroll to begin
II · The ocean is speaking

They measured every millimetre.

From 1992 to 2026, tide gauges across 14 Pacific nations recorded the ocean rising beneath them. 34 years of hourly measurements.

+157
Rise (mm)
5.3
mm / year
Safe → Caution
Zone 2025 → 2050
2.4M
Population
◎ Click any island to trace its oceanDots colored by 2050 projected risk zone (high emissions)
Show All
All 14 Nations (Average)
Data: BOM Pacific Sea Level & Geodetic Monitoring Project (438 station-years). Each station is an annual mean rebased to its own first year of record; records begin in different years (1992–2015), so the "average" is a composite of the stations reporting in each year, not a fixed 14-nation panel. Projections: IPCC AR6 WG1 Ch.9 median values (Fox-Kemper et al., 2021; dataset Garner et al., 2021, doi:10.5281/zenodo.5914709), via the NASA/IPCC AR6 Sea Level Projection Tool, relative to a 1995–2014 baseline and anchored to each station's 2025 observed level. Median values shown; likely (17th–83rd percentile) ranges are wider. Scenarios: SSP1-2.6 (below-2°C pathway) and SSP5-8.5 (high emissions). Risk zones per sealevelwatch.org.
Below 2°C (SSP1-2.6)
High emissions (SSP5-8.5)

This is the forecast, as it stood in 2026. Back then, there were two possibilities.

The yellow line (SSP1-2.6): the world honours the Paris Agreement, emissions peak early, warming stays below 2°C.

The red line (SSP5-8.5): fossil fuels stay dominant, emissions keep climbing, warming reaches 3.3 to 5.7°C by 2100.

In 2026, the average was still in the Safe zone. 157 millimetres. But the rate had never slowed. At 5.3 millimetres per year, Safe was not a destination. It was a countdown. And the countdown ran the same direction under both futures.

In both scenarios, the ocean rises. They could only draw the range. Which line came true is not in this archive. It is in the water outside.

III · What came with the water

What does a rising ocean arrive alongside in a nation?

The land produced less. People went hungry. People left.
Click each to see who was hit hardest.
All data from SPC Pacific Data Hub (DF_CLIMATE_CHANGE, DF_BP50); flood days via NOAA CO-OPS. These pressures are driven by many overlapping climate and economic factors; sea-level rise compounds them rather than causing them alone. Methodology notes in each card.
IV · The Initiative

They did everything right

Six things they built after uniting in 2014. Five moved forward. One went backward, not for lack of trying.
Toggle to compare. Click any card to learn what it does.
Pre-2014
2014 – 2025

Before 2014, Pacific nations acted individually. Climate efforts were fragmented across 22 separate governments with no unified regional framework for the Blue Pacific.

Did it change the trajectory?
Three outcomes, one direction1993 – 2014
2014: Regional framework adopted
2022: Blue Pacific 2050 Strategy endorsed

Nothing they did was wrong.
Nothing they did was enough.

The ceiling is not set by the people underneath it.

Data: SPC Pacific Data Hub. DF_CLIMATE_CHANGE(1.0): temperature, fisheries, monitoring; DF_BP50(1.0): Red List Index, disaster risk, renewable energy share, invasive species, biodiversity. Sea level from BOM (see the sea-level section above).
V · The 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent

The framework existed. How much could they even measure?

In 2022, all 22 nations endorsed the Blue Pacific 2050 Strategy. 7 pillars. 121 indicators.
By 2026, this is how much of it they had the capacity to report.

61%
Political Leadership
53%
People-Centred Development
23%
Peace & Security
48%
Resources & Economy
58%
Climate & Disasters
38%
Oceans & Environment
49%
Technology & Connectivity
Overall average: 47%

This is not tracking whether goals were met. It tracks how much of their own survival these nations had the resources to even measure. Across 121 indicators, the data exists 47% of the time. The rest is silence, not indifference: reporting takes statisticians, monitoring stations, and budgets that small island states are still building. And even complete data would not have moved the line the ocean follows.

They signed. They measured what they could.
The ocean kept its own record, every day.

Method: participation is the share of the 22 nations with at least one reported observation for an indicator, averaged across each pillar's indicators, then across pillars. It reflects reporting capacity, not whether any target was met. Peace & Security rests on a single reported indicator, so treat that pillar as indicative only.
Data: SPC Pacific Data Hub. DF_BP50_1 through DF_BP50_7 (pillar participation). Framework: 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent.

Museum, or memorial?

A museum preserves what survived.

A memorial marks what did not.

22 nations are still here. But the ocean has not stopped rising.

The answer is not written here. It is being written now.

Pacific Dataviz Challenge 2026

This visualization was created for the Pacific Dataviz Challenge 2026 (Climate Change theme). Built with vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. All charts rendered with Canvas API. Sea level data processed with Python.

Source on GitHub